The Silent Service in a New World
by Scorpion Razor
Summary: The submarine USS Humpback was prepared for anything the Empire of Japan could throw at it-but not for being transported to a new and strange world......
1. Prologue

Prologue:

March 8, 1945

The submarine USS Humpback powered its way through heavy wave after heavy wave as it moved through the dark Pacific waters. Raincoat-clad watch crew scoped out the surface with binoculars, trying to spot potential targets or enemies in the black, wet night. The crewmen in the submarine's cramped interior either carried their duties that kept the vessel running, or attempted to sleep through the bouncing and rolling that plagued any ship on the surface in weather this poor. The Humpback was out to do what American submarines had been doing for the past three years. It would attack the shipping lines that kept the resource-poor island of Japan afloat. Submarines like the Humpback had sunk millions of tons of merchant shipping, strangled Japan's economy, and prevented it from adequately reinforcing and resupplying its forces scattered on islands across the sea.

It was a very risky and often frustrating mission. Surface ships were rarely lost with all hands, while survivors of a submarine sinking were almost as uncommon. Submariners in battle would have to endure the horrific sensation of depth charges exploding close to their boat for hours on end. Worse, if you somehow managed to survive your boat's sinking, you had no friendly ships around to rescue you-only the notorious Japanese POW camps. The frustrating part was how many submarines were coming back from patrols without sinking anything but small fishing boats. This wasn't due to any flaws in the submarines performance, but simply because Japan had very few merchants left to sink.

Commander Robert L. Clarkson and the eighty men under him knew the risks, and knew the possibility of having to live for weeks inside a tight, stuffy boat with no enemy sinkings to show for it. They were navy men, and they carried out their orders. But they would soon find themselves in a situation that their orders did not cover…..

The submarine's crew was only briefly aware of what they entered into. The radar operators reported a large contact on the surface ahead of them, and the watch crew saw a bright object in the distance. Was it a ship? No, not unless ships had really big searchlights. And the object was getting closer. Clarkson ordered a sharp turn to avoid it, but it was too late.

The Humpback's crew was briefly blinded as they passed straight through the object. They had expected to feel a crash as the submarine slammed into it, but instead they just-slipped through as if nothing was there. Astonished at the fact that they were still alive and their ship still afloat, Clarkson and the rest of the deck crew surveyed their surroundings.

It was no longer dark and the seas were no longer rough. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the water gleamed with sunlight. The submarine's captain was still wondering what had just happened, when a crewman who had been looking through binoculars shouted "What the hell is that fish?"

Clarkson took a look at the fish that his watchman had seen. It was shaped unlike any other sea creature that he had seen or heard about. It had a grey-colored shell that reminded the skipper of a turtle, yet the rest of its body was nothing like that species. It had blue skin with the exception of a tan neck, and a long neck and head that resembled a giraffe more than any other animal. And it was-big, certainly bigger than any fish Clarkson had seen in person. The sea creature didn't seem to notice the submarine as it continued on its merry way.

"Where are we?"

"It ain't the Pacific, that's for sure."


	2. Chapter 1

The mood of the Humpback's crew was one of confusion and more than a little anxiety. Some of the crew believed that they had died and were in the afterlife. Others believed the Humpback to be the victim of some secret transporter weapon Japan had developed. Clarkson honestly didn't know what he thought had caused the submarine to be shifted into this new world or where they were. He wanted to hear the opinions of the other officers, and called a meeting in the wardroom where he asked them where they thought they were and what they felt had caused them to end up there.

Most of them shared Clarkson's opinion in regards to the first question, but the majority of them believed in the "secret Japanese weapon" theory regarding the second. The skipper couldn't blame them for thinking that way-it was plausible, and hell, he had even considered it himself. But the pieces just didn't fit together. The Navy had much larger and more important fleets that Japan undoubtedly knew the location of, so why didn't they direct this weapon at them instead of at a lone submarine a considerable distance from Japanese home waters? Clarkson couldn't count out the "secret weapon" theory out completely, but he wasn't convinced it was the sure explanation for how they ended up here.

One lieutenant offered an intriguing alternative theory for the situation. His theory was a variation of the "Japanese secret weapon" theory, but it differed in that the lieutenant believed that the weapon had done nothing more than induce hallucinations in the crew. That they had not actually been transported into a different world with strange aquatic life, but rather that they had simply had their minds zapped into believing that they had. He suggested that they set sail for Guam while signaling headquarters and telling them of their ordeal. Once they reached the harbor there, the American base personnel would take care of the boat and ensure that the crew got treatment. He argued that it would be better than simply sailing around aimlessly looking for clues for where they were, and that "If we're actually in a new world where we don't know shit about anything, southwest is as good a direction to go as any."

Clarkson seriously considered the lieutenant's proposed plan. The whole thing being a massive weapon-induced hallucination was no more or less plausible than any of the other theories, but this one offered a course of action that could be followed. Sailing for a friendly base in the hopes that it would be there was not a bad idea at all, especially if there was nothing else they could do. After the order to steer southwest for Guam was given, Clarkson retired to his cabin. He needed to rest and think.

The commanding officer of an American submarine was the only man who got a room to himself. It was a small room by anyone's standards, essentially consisting of a bed, a small sink, and a tiny writing desk wedged in as close to each other as they could possibly fit. But at least it was a room that Clarkson did not have to share with anyone else. Relaxing as much as he could in the noisy, stuffy, diesel-stenched environment of the Humpback, Clarkson let the enormity of the situation pour through his mind.

He wasn't worried about his choice to sail for a base that may not be there. He was worried about what he might find out in this new world. What if there were more creatures like that giraffe-turtle they had seen earlier that were hostile towards humans and capable of harming the submarine? What if there were no humans at all, and thus no means of refueling the boat? What if-no! Clarkson told himself to shut up. He couldn't afford to worry about all the bad things that might happen. Not when the boat's functioning depended on his mental health.

After finally managing to get his mind clear through agonizing force of will, Clarkson took a much-needed sleep. For several blessed hours he was free from all of his stresses and worries, with only pleasant dreams of home in his mind. When reality finally kicked in again, the skipper felt vastly more refreshed and confident in his ability to handle the situation. It was just as well, for it had been mere minutes after he had woken up that a new situation arose.

A radio operator had been scanning through as many different frequencies as he could in hopes of picking up transmissions from this world. He had discovered a station that appeared to be playing some sort of music. It was soft and staticky, but he could make out the words "Be the very best" and "Train them is my". The style was unlike anything the radioman had listened to, but he recognized some sort of organ in the background along with a straightforward drumbeat. Clarkson had arrived just in time to hear the last few bits of the song himself-he caught the words "catch em all" before the station had the bad luck to dissolve into static again. The song was clearly recognizable as music to both Clarkson and the radio operator, but was as alien as the giraffe-turtle that had been spotted earlier.

"Whaddya think, Robbie?" asked the executive officer.

"I think it means this ain't no hallucination."

"Why?"

"How can you fool a radio into playing something that ain't in this world? How can your minds be confused into thinkin' something they don't know about? Where we are, we should be hearin' some Jap propaganda guy boastin' about how we Yankees are fucked. But no. We're hearin' music that's new to us in English."

Clarkson then cancelled the previous order to head for Guam and directed the Humpback to hunt for the source of the radio signal. The lieutenant who had suggested that they head in that direction was infuriated at the decision to "chase some phantom broadcast" instead of heading for a base they knew to exist. This led to a verbal tussle between the two at the next mealtime, with the lieutenant not wanting to admit that he was wrong about what had happened to the submarine.

_That's odd, _Clarkson thought to himself. _Usually Lieutenant Dicamaro ain't that stubborn, 'specially when he's goin' against the CO. _Than it came to him. Dicamaro wanted to believe that he knew exactly what had happened to the Humpback and what to do about it. He was in denial, not wanting to admit that he honestly had no clue about where they were, how they had gotten here, or what they could do. It was a natural enough reaction-humans feared the unknown, and liked knowing what happened to them. Yet Clarkson knew that they would be facing a lot more unknown, and that such stubborn, denialist attitudes would not be helpful. He would have to keep an eye on Dicamaro, to see if his behavior would get better or worse as they went on.

The submarine had now been in this new world for two days. So far, all was good. The crew's morale was still at an acceptable level, the submarine had plenty of fuel and provisions, and the captain knew what he was doing. The radio station had been getting stronger as they headed north-the exact opposite direction from Guam, and the crew was able to get several more insights into the new world by hearing it.

The word "Pokemon" was mentioned a lot, but the crew were having a hard time guessing exactly what it meant. They kept hearing advertisements like "If you want your Pokemon to be strong, don't forget to buy the best feed packs from the Poke Mart nearest you." That implied them to be living creatures, but was it a generalized term like pet, or was a Pokemon a specific type of living creature? Clarkson and the crewmen with freer minds took to pondering this as the submarine continued to head north, to an uncertain destination.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

The Humpback had moved closer and closer to the radio station, to the point where they could hear it perfectly clearly. That was the problem-now that it was clear, they could no longer use it a means of navigation towards an exact point. Still, it meant that they had to be close to some sort of English-speaking civilization, a fact that pleased Clarkson and the rest of the crew greatly. The last thing they wanted was to be stuck in a savage world without the technology to maintain their boat.

The skipper had insisted on making long sweeps in search of land, with orders to turn back to a previously marked point if the radio station started to fade. This was the best form of navigation they had-their maps were useless, and even the old-fashioned way of using the stars didn't work in a sky where the stars were arranged differently.

They spotted several more of the strange creatures throughout their voyage. The most common were fish that had bodies shaped almost like human heads, complete with man-like eyes. These sea creatures had a pair of long tentacles protruding from their bodies and large red spots on the top of their "heads". Headfish was the name given to these specific creatures.

Another type of fish they saw on their sweeps was the most conventional type of sea creature they had seen in this world. It was a large, orange-colored animal with long whiskers and a body that was unusually round. Its size and roundness was the only thing that set it apart from the fish that the crew were familiar with, and the sight of one brought an odd-reassurance that maybe this new world may not be so strange and alien after all. A few crewmen had even tried to catch one with a cobbled-together reel, but their efforts were frustrated by the submarine turning away just after they cast their line. Clarkson was belowdecks during the incident, and he forbade the crew from any more fishing attempts after he heard of it. The crew's digestive systems were undoubtedly not used to something from a completely different world, and the last thing he needed was a submarine full of food poisoning victims.

On one of their sweeps, the Humpback detected something its crew hadn't seen since they'd ended up in the new world-land. Clarkson had decided that they would head north on their next search, and in the crew's opinion, he had never made a better choice. Even before they spotted land, the decision had been a promising one, in that the radio station had not begun to fade when they traveled northward.

It was late at night when they finally spotted land in the form of both a massive radar contact that couldn't be anything else but solid ground, and in the distant shining lights of a city. There were smaller lights away from the city that were undoubtedly roads. Never keeping his eyes off of it, Clarkson ordered that a course be set for the city. He had to see what kind of society awaited there, and more importantly, the Humpback did not have unlimited fuel.

As the submarine moved for the mysterious city, Clarkson and his officers began to make plans for what to do when they got there. Dicamaro was still believing in his "secret weapon that caused them to go crazy" theory, and made his now-typical suggestion to turn back for Guam. Clarkson had to silently grit his teeth and tense his muscles whenever he heard the young lieutenant's stubborn defense of his theory. Thankfully, everyone else was far more receptive, and they set out contingencies for multiple situations that could conceivably arise when they reached the city. When the plans for what to do were all worked out, Clarkson decided to get some sleep. When they arrived at a new place in a world as strange as this one, he needed to be as alert as possible.

While the submarine captain slept, he had a bizarre dream. He dreamt of seeing a gigantic battleship and an equally large rose crash into each other, sending fragments of metal and rose petals flying everywhere. The fragments danced around in the air, trailing giant streams like the contrails generated by aircraft engines. The fragments slowly fell to the ground, and Clarkson only saw the oddly relaxing sight of them drifting down for a few minutes before a giant human head suddenly burst out of the ground and issued a wordless roar. Clarkson's view shifted to that of a giant chain hanging in the sky and-that was the last of what he saw in the dream as he was woken up by a crewman.

"XO wants you up on the bridge. We've got their Coast Guard on us."

Clarkson sprung out of bed, put on his cap, and climbed up to the bridge, where he saw what the crewman was talking about. Right next to the iHumpback/i was a small patrol boat, easily visible in the early morning light. Its crewmen were all white, and they wore a type of uniform that consisted of an orange jacket and baseball cap, with a blue shirt and pants underneath. One of them was talking to the executive officer.

"Ah, there's the captain!" he shouted to the man he was talking to, before turning to face Clarkson and whispering quietly. "You take it from here, Robbie. They're called the Sea Rangers, and they just wanna know 'bout who we are and what we're doing here."

Clarkson turned to the other boat and raised his voice so that he could be heard over the sound of the waves and engines. "This is a ship of the United States Navy. We're-"

"The what?"

_He don't know what the USN is_, Clarkson thought to himself.i_More proof we ain't in the Pacific anymore, as if I needed any_. There went what slight hope he had was that his ship would be recognized as one of a friendly navy. Instead, it would be recognized as a totally alien warship, and Clarkson knew that if he was patrolling the coasts and saw a ship that was obviously both a warship and of completely unknown origin, he would escort it to the closest naval base, where it would be impounded and its crew taken into custody. So what could he do?

_The fact that he ain't callin' us a warship or sub means-that's it. Pretend you ain't a warship._The skipper smiled to himself as he hastily improvised something to say. "We're a weather research ship for a company called United States Forecasting. Pretty small company-it took a lot of our budget just to get this one ship. Just out doin' our job, though we kinda had a lot less fuel than we thought. We'd like to dock at the nearest available port."

The Sea Ranger captain seemed to be thinking to himself for a bit and looking the Humpback over. "What are those things?" he said, pointing at the anti-aircraft guns on the conning tower.

Clarkson hastily responded. "They're wind tubes. Air goes through 'em, tells you the wind speed. The one there-" he pointed to the 5" deck gun-"that's a buoy dispenser. Puts buoys out to read water conditions far enough away that the boat's movement doesn't mess it up."

"I see", the captain said in response. After a brief silence that made Clarkson nervous about whether his ploy had worked or not, he continued with "Sure! We'll escort you to Fuchsia."

Clarkson didn't know what Fuchsia was, but it was almost certainly the city they'd seen. As the submarine began to follow the patrol boat, he had one request for the captain that would make him rest easier. "Could you get us into a berth that's-out of the way? Big ships coming and going really mess up our instruments."

"Sure. Don't want you to get your forecasts wrong!" the captain said with a smile.

Clarkson was extremely fortunate that he had caught the Sea Ranger patrol boat at a time near the very end of its crews shift. They were at a point where they just wanted to get their job over with so they could go home and sleep. This, coupled with the captain's lack of knowledge regarding weather forecasting, made Clarkson's cover story much easier to swallow. When the Humpback docked in Fuschia harbor, its commander felt relieved about making to shore without incident, and a mixture of both anticipation and worry about what he would find in the city beyond him.

After he set foot on dry land, Clarkson took a look at his reflection in the water. He saw a white man in his early thirties with a lean face, green eyes, and short blond hair. Looking back up, the skipper reveled in the normality around him. The dock was familiar, the city did not look unusual, the whole place was inhabited by white English speakers-how truly alien could this world be?


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

The crew naturally wanted to get out of their cramped boat and look for drink and women. Clarkson knew that simply letting them run wild across the city would be an absolute disaster, so he ordered them to stay on board while he and two handpicked members of the crew scouted the town out.

Dicamaro and a torpedoman's mate named Ed Starling were the ones that Clarkson had picked to come with him. The latter was one of the best men in a fight that Clarkson knew, and was someone he wanted to have by his side if things got rough. The former he had chosen not because of any advantage he possessed, but simply because he felt that overwhelming evidence of an actual new world might convince him that his theory was flawed.

It was during their preparations that Clarkson felt thankful that the navy's dress regulations were relaxed on submarines. Three men in full uniform would have stuck out like a sore thumb in a crowd of civilians, so the skipper had fished some non-regulation attire out of the laundry for them to wear. Dicamaro took a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt, Starling dressed in a plaid shirt and a set of his own jeans, while Clarkson took another white shirt but kept his uniform pants.

After changing into appropriate clothing, the trio filled their pockets with everything from paper money of dubious value to signal flares that would be used to contact the Humpback in an emergency. Clarkson conducted one final meeting with the executive officer to go over directions, and then they were off, climbing out of the conning tower and onto the streets of Fuchsia.

The dock was nothing new to the three submariners, but the main city certainly was. There were billboards everywhere, more than in any place Clarkson had been to before, and they were emblazoned with almost-childish huge, colorful letters and exclamation points. Also new to the submariners was the architecture of some of the buildings. For every one done in a style they recognized, there were ones in strange angled shapes, with exteriors that seemed to be made totally out of glass. But neither the billboards nor the buildings could hold a candle to the _creatures_ that Clarkson and his crew saw. Their pictures were all over the billboards, on signs everywhere, and some were even spotted in the flesh, walking with humans on the streets. No one had ever seen such bizarre creatures before, and some could not have even imagined them. There were the creatures that looked like some Walt Disney rendition of turtles that walked on two legs, impossibly large bats with impossibly large mouths, and others that were equally strange.

Quite possibly the oddest of them all was a creature that resembled a young flightless bird to some degree-and had _two heads_. They saw it standing by a bench where a young-looking man was sitting, eating pellets out of a bag with one head while the other continued to look upwards.

"See that, Julian?", Clarkson said quietly to Dicamaro, addressing him by his first name. "You still think this ain't real? You're gonna touch it. Then you'll know this ain't some mind trick."

"Robbie, you're-fucking crazy." Dicamaro's face was starting to sweat, and his mouth was twisting.

Clarkson was smiling. "Touch it."

Dicamaro was hesitantly starting to walk towards the two-headed bird. "What's the matter, why ain't you goin' faster?"

"Ok, Robbie, I-"

"Touch it now! That's an order!"

The round-faced lieutenant walked towards the two-headed bird swiftly, yet calmly. He placed his hand on one of its downy heads and began to rub it-and then the other head snapped out with its beak, pecking Dicamaro in the arm. He withdrew quickly, clutching his arm and yelping in pain.

The young man sitting on the bench was up in a moment, addressing them. "It's OK. Really, it's all right. My doduo just doesn't like strangers to touch him."

He let out a small laugh. "Probably should've told you that before you tried to pet him. Oh well. Let me see your arm, see how bad it is."

Dicamaro held out his wounded arm for the young man-and Clarkson- to examine. There was a wound, but it was nothing severe. After the bird's owner was done looking at the wound, he began rummaging through his backpack, muttering "I know I've got some here somewhere, maybe they're in another pocket-all right!"

He pulled out a tin of adhesive bandages from out of the backpack and handed one to Dicamaro, apologizing once again for his "doduo" accidentally hurting him. The three submariners walked off, thanking the young man for his kindness . As they continued down the road, Starling was trying hard to keep from laughing. Clarkson had a victorious grin on his face, while the unfortunate lieutenant looked like a boy who had been told that he wouldn't get to have dessert.

"So, Julian. You still think this is a hallucination?"

Dicamaro hesitated for a time, before simply answering "No."

Clarkson's grin grew wider upon hearing that, and it made Dicamaro want to punch his commander in the face whenever he looked at it. Silently seething to himself, he continued along, not looking at Clarkson whenever he could help it. Starling still thought the entire episode funny, but he was becoming more subdued after the initial shock had worn off.

Eventually, thoughts drifted back to the mission. Clarkson took note of the fact that while they had seen plenty of what were almost certainly "Pokemon" and checked out the city, they hadn't actually gone inside any buildings, nor had they spoken to anyone at length. The former at least could be accomplished without much effort, and Clarkson chose a building that was perfect for gathering information-a bookstore.

The "Grey's Books" store was a fairly large bookshop with neat shelves and a colorful interior. Customers, many of them younger than Clarkson expected for such a place, filled the store. The few comfortable chairs in the building were hogged viciously, and some readers were simply sitting on the floor, in spots as out of the way as they could get. A type of music that sounded somewhat like a slower version of jazz poured from wall speakers.

Now that the submariners were inside the bookstore, the question was what they would do there. Clarkson considered a regimented search, with a third of the bookstore being assigned to each of them to avoid overlap-and then promptly decided against it. He thought to himself, _we all could use a bit o' relaxin', 'specially if we just got here_, and gave his two subordinates free reign to pick books from whatever area of the store they wanted, though he told them to give at least a glance to as many shelves as they could.

Clarkson himself didn't know where he should start. There were simply too many books everywhere, and all of them were printed by a culture completely new to him. Every time he looked over a shelf, another one seemed to call his attention. He felt like his mind was a horse on a track, running around fast and hard, but not really going anywhere. Just as his gaze shifted from cookbooks to atlases, he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see a frantic Starling.

"Robbie, you won't believe what I just saw" he whispered in the commander's ear.

"What was it?"

"Basically, this guy outside had this little creature that looked like a giant green mouse walking by him. Now he pulled out this red and white ball like this-", the sailor used his hand to show the ball's approximate size before continuing.

"And then he pushed this button on the ball, and it opened and shot out this beam of red light that hit the green mouse and-surrounded it totally, and then got sucked back inside the ball, and then there was no trace of the mouse after it. I'm serious, Robbie. And no one else so much as blinked"

"I believe you, you ain't gotta worry."

Clarkson himself was both worried and curious about this incident and the technological capacity it implied. Starling's discovery was enough to snap him out of his indecision, and he set out to find an appropriate section and pick up a book, regardless of what it was. Thanking Starling for telling him about the incident, he was about to dismiss him, before he remembered to ask him what he had read.

"Just mainly this novel, about a trainer-that's what they call someone who raises Pokemon, and his efforts to catch this thief who's stolen his Pokemon's baby."

Clarkson was a little disappointed in the sailor for jumping right to the adventure novels, but not as much as he could have been. After all, it was_ his_ responsibility to gather as much information as he could about the world they were in and use it to determine what the Humpback would do next. All Starling had to do was help keep the torpedoes clean.

After dismissing Starling, the skipper headed for the section marked "For Beginning Trainers". The majority of people looking at the shelves were children, and Clarkson had yet another mental argument with himself as to whether what seemed like the children's section was the best place to look for information about the world-before assuring himself that he was a child in this world, and knew about as much about the world as the children there did-and likely even less.

So he threw himself into the section and grabbed a few of the books he believed to be the most useful for the basic information about the world that he wanted. He then found a chair that was unusually empty, and snagged it, sitting down to read about the new world that he and his boat had ended up in. Clarkson first read _A Beginning Trainer's Guide to the Pokemon of Kanto_, looking at the descriptions of all the creatures he had in the street.

It felt so good to be able to learn, to understand this new world. To turn on a light so that one no longer flailed around in the darkness. The book Clarkson had picked out wasn't the brightest light, but it was a light nonetheless. He was able to know the proper names of the creatures he had seen before. Headfish were called "Tentacool's", the round, orange fish were called "Magikarps", and the giant bats with impossibly large mouths were called "Golbats". The two-headed bird that pecked Dicamaro was called a "Doduo." Clarkson already knew it was called that, but wasn't sure as to whether it was an individual or species name until he read it in the book.

Clarkson excitedly read through the entire book, completely losing track of the time. When he finally finished after going all the way to the back cover, the skipper felt like a man who had just took the first bite of a delicious meal. It felt good, and he wanted more. But as he looked at the small pile of books sitting on his lap, his indecisiveness returned. Which one should he look at next? Still intrigued by Starling's observation, he chose _The Basics of Catching Pokemon_ next.

Sure enough, the book began with an introduction to the device called the Poke Ball, and its illustrated description was exactly like Starling's testimony. This really made Clarkson's mind move around-if these people could make something like this, what else were they capable of? Just as he was about to get deeper into the book, Clarkson heard Dicamaro's close voice calling him.

"Robbie, it's past the rendezvous time."

Clarkson looked at a wall clock and found that Dicamaro was right. It was fifteen minutes past the time they had told the other officers when they would arrive back at the Humpback, and they hadn't even gotten starting returning. He pondered the situation. While military timing was never set in stone, especially for something as unusual as this, too much of a delay in returning might cause the crew to panic and start running around the city looking for him-which would only lead to attention and trouble that Clarkson didn't want.

As they had no money valid in this world, Clarkson and his crewmen had to reluctantly put their books back on the shelves before they left the store. As they began to walk back to the submarine, the skipper asked his crew what they'd read, and explained what he had encountered. Starling had read only his novel about the hunt for the Pokemon thief, while Dicamaro had first looked at a book on doduos, and later a small booklet of maritime flag signals.

Thanks to both an unfamiliarity with the city's layout and the distraction caused by so much conversation about what they'd read, Clarkson and his party got lost several times on their way back to the submarine and had to ask directions to the harbor several times. As a result, it was almost three hours past their expected rendezvous time when they finally returned to their boat.

Clarkson wasted no time with meeting the other officers and telling them everything he learned, as well as making plans for the next trip out. It would be hard work to overcome all the potential obstacles, but if the men of the Humpback didn't want hard work, they wouldn't have joined the submarine force.


End file.
